Ceremony to Install Trustees and Convenors

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Last Updated: 24 December 2012

This ceremony is held annually in June during the Sunday Service the week after the new Board Members are elected at the Annual General Meeting. Board Members are generally elected for a three-year term, with three new members elected each year. Convenors are appointed by the Board in consultation with the Convenor Team and generally serve a three-year term. Board members and Convenors are volunteer members of the congregation.

Charge to the Convenors and the Board of Trustees

Minister: This congregation holds a sacred trust. In our "free church" tradition there is no hierarchy responsible for remembering our past or creating our future. We are the inheritors and participants in the great religious story of liberal faith that serves as a beacon of hope and promise and devotion. Understanding that we share responsibility for preserving, maintaining, and furthering those values as a community, each spring, we choose members from our midst to lead, promote, and protect our religious community. We elect our Board of Trustees to guide policy that we might fulfill the vision we, as a congregation, have set for ourselves, and we empower our Convenors to help guide us in making that vision real. As our leaders take up these responsibilities anew, let us give to them our gratitude and our support.

Congregation: We, the members and friends of First Unitarian, thank you for your willingness to serve the vision and mission of our congregation. As you act on our behalf, we charge you to keep always in mind the traditions out of which we have come and the needs of the world in which we live. We ask that you challenge us by holding ever before us our enduring promise and the guiding principles of this faith.

In this our shared ministry, we pledge to you our support and our best efforts as, together, we work to build in this place a community grounded in joy, justice, integrity and love.

Convenors and Members of the Board: Mindful of the responsibilities and the honour to which we have been called, we take up the charge placed before us. We will act with care and diligence, to lead, challenge and minister with you, to sustain our congregation and the larger community it serves. All this we pledge, to the best of our ability, to you, our companions, who share in this living trust.

All: Together, then, we dedicate ourselves anew to the work of building up this beloved community.